National Affairs: Integration Delayed

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation decision, drawled
Federal District Judge William Hawley Atwell in Dallas last week, was
not based on law but "rather, on what the court regarded as more
authoritative, modern psychological knowledge than existed at the time
that the now-discarded doctrine of equal facilities was initiated ... I
might suggest that if there are civil rights, there are also civil
wrongs." So saying, Judge Atwell, a peppery, 87-year-old veteran of 33
years on the federal bench, ruled that the Dallas public schools need
not integrate "at the present time."